Okay it is said "don't make a page in progress"… but I think for people who are looking for info… every bit of info can be helpfull… So I would say publish pages that are in progress and use the tag _inprogress

Timothy… why is how-do-i not a good tag? the tag cloud is in my opinion an impulsive tool. If I see a word that interest me I click on it. I thought it would good to show a list of all the "how do I"s when you click on the tag.

I've done unconventional things with the TagCloud module, like on this page where I use it only for the purpose of organizing words by alphabetical order, but I don't want to have certain words different colors or sizes. I simply applied the same thing here, but I don't quite know exactly how the conventional use for the TagCloud module is, so if you want to change it, go ahead.

EDIT: Oops; I seemed to have misunderstood you the first time, and so I see why a hidden tag is insufficient.

Well, there is a few of ways to do this: get rid of the search, place a How Do I Search link with the tagcloud as to make it obvious all the how do i's, or use some convoluted workaround with ListPages and dummy pages.